USPTO director David Kappos?is getting things done. He?s opening satellite USPTO offices, helping American University law students patent sex, and now, supporting crowdsourcing prior art searches for patent applications.
Crowdsourcing is a method of tapping into the collective intelligence of the public at large in order to complete tasks such as gathering medical advice or raising funds. As technology has facilitated the gathering of third-party input, the concept of crowdsourcing has expanded into numerous fields. Now, the USPTO is supporting a new method of crowdsourcing patent prosecution through?Ask Patents, a Q&A forum designed to scour the internet for patenting advice.
On September 16, 2012, a provision of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act was implemented to allow, for the first time in U.S. patent law, third parties to submit relevant materials to patent examiners in any given examination. Ask Patents?is a platform that seizes on this opportunity to ask scientific experts, as members of the public, to identify prior art related to patent applications. The patentability of a claimed innovation in a patent application is based on the prior art. Prior art can be another patent, a published article, or a previous implementation. It can be created anywhere, in any language, making it a challenge for patent examiners to fully identify all of the prior art that pertains to a particular claimed innovation. Ask Patents?s parent site, Stack Exchange, describes the new site as a ?crowd-sourced worldwide detective agency to track down and obliterate bogus patent applications.?
Other forums have tried crowdsourcing patents before. Peer2Patent was a joint project between the USPTO and New York Law School (NYLS) that allows anybody in the public to: (1) review and discuss posted patent applications; (2) search for and upload relevant prior art references; (3) evaluate submitted prior art; (4) gain to opportunity to have his or her references and commentary forwarded to the USPTO. ?This pilot program was a main motivator of the Ask Patents platform after a final review indicated that ?those applications that matured to issuance were more thoroughly vetted and, thus, stronger than many of their counterparts which did not participate in this public review.? Similarly, Article One Partners (AOP) is a privately funded platform that governs a wide network of researchers who are paid to identify publications related to the technology described in patents. Patent applicants or accused infringers can hire researchers in 176 countries to scour world-wide studies translated into nine languages. AOP asserts that this research ?allows our clients to make better patent-related business decisions.?
The USPTO believes that crowdsourcing will lead to a more exhaustive scope of materials for examiners to review in order to improve the quality of issued patents. After all, why have one person judge if thousands are able and willing to contribute? Gaining access to a worldwide network of scientific experts has great potential. If an entire network of researchers has vetted the patent claims, the strength of the patent is much more secure. Additionally, even highly experienced examiners cannot be experts on every innovation an application might reveal. Innovations, by definition, are often esoteric to most members of even the scientific community. There will be at least a handful of experts whom have the potential to quickly pass on a note that can guide a patent examiner to relevant prior art. Proponents of crowdsourcing argue that high quality researchers will be eager to participate in exchange for the social status and reputation to be gained in the community of scientific experts. Accordingly, the Ask Patents site allows for ratings of its submitters, hoping to tap into this desire to build a strong reputation.
However, there are conceived limitations to such a system. While proponents argue that public art searches will be expedited, there still remains the limitation that a single examiner is left to process the prior art. When an examiner conducts his own search, he understands what he is looking for, and is able to proceed along a logical thread. When the examiner is inundated with sources, he will flip from one consideration of the innovation to another. This approach may become messy, and ultimately more tedious for the examiners. Additionally, the quality of the results will naturally depend on the members of the public who participate. Some well-meaning submitters may simply yield distractions for the already over-worked examiners. ?Furthermore, it is highly possible, if not likely, that at least a few scientific fields will lack experts that have already signed onto the program. In these areas, researchers with less useful submissions may be eager to help fill the void. If the third-party submissions have been consistently more comprehensive than the examiner?s individual search, it will be easy for an examiner to become too reliant on the third-party submissions.
So what do you think? Do you think crowdsourcing is an effective way to improve the patent system? Or do you think it?s not worth the hassle? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: http://www.mttlrblog.org/2012/10/11/crowdsourcing-not-just-for-businesses-anymore/
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